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SBIR/STTR

Mobile In-Situ Mars Water Extractor (MISME), Phase I

Project Introduction

Extracting water and volatiles from icy soils requires excavating and manipulating those soils as feedstock, but the Phoenix mission demonstrated some of the difficulties that may be encountered during such operations. The solution to these problems is an integrated mobile mining and water extraction system that uses an auger based excavation approach and an integrated water-ice extraction plant  hence, if the water-ice does sublime, it will sublime straight into the extraction system.
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Anticipated Benefits

NASA applications would satisfy goals of ESMD and SMD. In particular, this water-vapor extraction could be a reconnaissance tool to map the ice distribution around the area. It also could be used (as designed) as a water-vapor production system to support human habitats. Increasing the production could be done by deploying more than one of these rovers (and hence the system would have redundancy through numbers). This particular vapor extraction process is not limited to water, but also other volatiles. Hence, non-NASA applications include robotic acquisition of volatiles as well as soil and liquid samples from hazardous environments: chemical spills, nuclear waste, oil spills.
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